PLAY EXPO BLACKPOOL 2018

For the final weekend in October, we head up England’s North-West coast to the city of Blackpool and the Norbreck Castle Hotel, home of this year’s Play Expo show.

The Norbreck Castle Hotel

Play Expo is being held in the Exhibition Centre, which is in Norcalympia – the left part of the somewhat sprawling complex of function rooms and guest accommodation. The building looks rather run-down and in need of either significant restoration or something more drastic.

The part of the complex housing the Exhibition Hall

Play Expo is a large retro gaming show featuring hundreds of PCs, consoles, handhelds, arcade video games and, of course, pinballs. For the last few years it was held at the EventCity exhibition hall in Manchester but, apparently, the owners of that facility had become too difficult to work with, and so for this year only the show has returned to the place it all began – Norbreck Castle in Blackpool.

We arrived on Friday evening during the set-up time to check out the pinballs provided by members of the pinball community and managed by the Northern Lights Pinball team. These machines are located in a corridor running down the length of the adjacent main hall.

Setting up the last few machinesThese seven had just arrived

The main hall was also looking pretty complete, with all the games, computers and consoles in place ready for the start of the show at 10am the next day.

Inside the main hall

We returned on Saturday morning before the doors opened to the public, and there was a sizeable queue of visitors waiting for the start of the show.

Part of the queue to get in just before 10am on Saturday

Members of the Northern Lights Pinball team were going over some last minute organisational details and fixing machines which didn’t survive the journey to Blackpool unscathed.

Once the doors were opened at 10:00 sharp, it took around twenty minutes before all the pinballs were occupied.

It wasn’t long before every machine was in use

There were 57 pinballs at Play Expo 2018. Here’s the full list:

AC/DC Pro

Metallica

Addams Family, The

Mr & Mrs Pac-Man

Addams Family, The

Nautilus

Aerobatics

NBA Fastbreak

Aerosmith Pro

NBA Fastbreak

Avatar

Paragon

Batman 66

Queen’s Castle

Batman: The Dark Knight

Revenge from Mars

Black Knight 2000

Robocop

Black Rose

Silver Slugger

Circus

Ski Jump

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Skill Pool

Deadly Weapon

South Park

Dialed In!

Space Jam

Dracula, Bram Stoker’s

Space Ship

Elvis

Spectrum

F-14 Tomcat

Spider-Man

Family Guy

Star Trek (Data East)

Flintstones, The

Star Wars (Data East)

Free Fall

Terminator 2: Judgement Day

Getaway, The: High Speed 2

Theatre of Magic

Getaway, The: High Speed 2

Tron Legacy

Hobbit, The

WhoDunnit?

Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure

Wizard of Oz, The

Iron Man

Wizard!

Jackbot

World Poker Tour

Junk Yard

World Poker Tour

Kick-Off

X-Files

Medieval Madness

The Addams Family electric chair challenge – as featured here in Pinball News – was back, giving visitors a new way to experience the classic game.

The Addams Family Electric Chair ChallengeAd Jonker brought his Silver Slugger and Free Fall games from the Netherlands

There were three high score competitions taking place. The adult one was being run on World Poker Tour, the kids one on Creature from the Black Lagoon, and there was an EM competition held on Skill Pool.

Creature was the Kids high score machineThe EM high score competition machineAll the machines remained busy throughout the dayIt was especially busy in the Pinball thru the Ages room

Occasionally, all the constant play took its toll and a machine developed a fault, as pinballs do. Every machine was numbered, and faults could be reported at the organisers’ desk for swift attention.

The organisers’ desk held the keys and also had various LED displays for saleThis NBA Fastbreak had lost all solenoid power – a fault traced to a broken wire on the coin door interlock switch

The rest of the show was just as packed, with any available spaces in front of monitors soon pounced-upon.

In the main hallLots and lots of 8-bit and more-modern gamingTelevised presentations and demonstrations were held frequently on the main stageImmersive and connected gaming were popular tooLAN gaming held here

The arcade video equivalent of the pinball display was located at the back of the main hall. Several clusters of upright cabinets brought back many classic videos for visitors to enjoy.

A few of the many arcade video gamesClassic titles to playAn overview of the main hall

Play Expo closed to the public at 6pm on Saturday, but for a select group there was an extended private ‘lock-in’ from 7pm until 2am where those who brought machines were able to play all the games in relative peace.

The pinballs during the ‘lock-in’ on Saturday nightIn the main hall during the ‘lock-in’

The show continued on Sunday, while we began our four-hour journey back home.

The annual UK amusement and coin-op trade show is bacckk at ExCel London in the Docclands area of the capital. Often a launchpad for various companies’ new releases, expect a presence from Stern Pinball on …